Dolphin: Time Warner Blocks Al Jazeera — For Now

Why does our media system attract so many uninformed and unbrave people who are locked into such predictable and parochial attitudes? Do they have an agenda that the public is unaware of?

Take Time Warner. Remember how it initially would not run the then new red white and blue Fox News on its platform in New York City, forcing it to cough up a high “per-subscriber fee” to get on the air? That was a clear commercial dispute with a bit of extortion thrown in, an attempt to protect their news channel, CNN, from being challenged.

Now that Al Jazeera has bought Current TV, a channel shown on Time Warner cable, the Time Warner megacorp became the first system operator out of the box to say it would not carry the new news channel that the Qatar-based network wants to launch in America, in much the same way that BBC set up BBC America to offer its programming to US viewers.

Even as Time Warner carries Russia Today, CCTV out of China and other foreign-owned channels, it is excluding this channel before they even know what it will offer. This could be a ploy to jack up licence fees – a la Fox News – but there is probably more to it.